This is it! The peak of the apple and cherry blossom, coinciding with a day of perfect clarity of sky. Time to snap the fruit trees in flower, the glory of the neighbourhood!
Below: where the orchard ends and the forest begins.
Below: a young male deer between rows of apple trees bedecked in blossom. Note the dandelions in a line along the grass. Today and yesterday I spotted several deer and a similar number of hares.
Below: a trio of hares between the trees, near Gaj Żelechowski yesterday. And a propos of wildlife, I cannot ignore the birdsong; blackbirds, blue tits and the Eurasian black cap (Sylvia atricapilla, kapturka). Most beautiful and complex at this time of year.
Below: even the commercial orchards, neat rows of apple trees under hailstone-proof netting, are blooming. This one is in Adamów Rososki. Overhead, an Emirates airliner is on its way from Stockholm to Dubai.
Although the sky was perfectly clear from dawn to dusk, it was rather a cool day, with the top temperature not exceeding 18°C, and a night-time low of just 1°C forecast. It's like the Ice Saints have come early! Tomorrow will also be an optimal day for viewing the apple blossom of Chynów and district. Unlikely to last until next weekend. The cold means the scent is not as entrancing as it was on warmer days, when the head swims in the perfumed air.
Below: not every fruit tree is in blossom this year. These biennial-bearing cherry trees that are not tended the year round bear fruit (and indeed flowers) much less profusely every second year. My apple trees, which produced a bumper crop last autumn, are showing no blossom this year.
This time 13 years ago:
Testing the Boris Bike
Testing the Boris Bike
This time 14 year:
Corruption: reasons to be cheerful
This time 16 years ago:
Bicycle shakedown day
This time 17 years ago:
Jeziorki in full bloom
Corruption: reasons to be cheerful
This time 16 years ago:
Bicycle shakedown day
This time 17 years ago:
Jeziorki in full bloom
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2 comments:
Lovely pictures! My one sorry-looking apple tree produced a decent crop last year - it had probably sensed I was minded to take an axe to it at long last - and erupted in blossom this year, after I had doused the roots with ammonia sulphate earlier this spring. It held up against last night's frost too, so, ever suspicious of appearances, I'm expecting some foul play from it later this summer. But ... rape fields are coming into blossom in Lubelskie and next week, if the sky stays blue, the world will be in technicolour!
@ Jacek Koba
Dousing roots with ammonia sulphate? That'll put an end to biennial bearing! Lop some of the higher branches too. Once a tree is properly tended, it will bear fruit every year.
Kodachrome rather than Technicolor is my prefered aesthetic :-)
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